"Bank of America... sending letters to thousands of homeowners... offering to forgive a portion of the principal balance on their mortgages by an average of $150,000 each."

The idea is to "turn mortgages headed for possible foreclosure into long-term performing loans."

You have to be "at least 60 days behind on payments as of the end of January," so too bad for you if you missed the deadline on... missing deadlines. It's now too late to be too late. A new meaning for the phrase it got late early.